Student, teacher come full circle

Wednesday

Sep 11, 2013 at 4:10 PM

When Rice decided to leave teaching for something affording him and his growing family a more flexible schedule, he kept his longtime mentor in mind and Krysalka joined Digital Fury in March of this year as a part-time employee.

By Doug EngleStaff writer

Under the late afternoon sun and with temperatures soaring into the mid 90s, beads of sweat ran down Marc Rice's face under his close-cropped haircut.

Rice crouched behind a tripod mounted with a Nikon D700 digital camera while framing a shoot for a series of orientation-related videos for the College of Central Florida.

It was another busy day for Rice and Digital Fury, a video production company he started in 2011.

“We shoot all types of video,” he said. “Documentaries, commercial production and health care marketing.”

“A lot of it has a journalistic style, since that's my background,” said Rice, who got his professional start as a videographer for the Villages News Network before moving on to Orlando TV stations WESH and WKMG.

Rice also had the benefit of consulting the man he credits as an inspiration. On that day, Bill Krysalka experimented with a series of reflective screens, trying to get the lighting just right for the CF shoot. He and Rice wear the same black polo shirt monogrammed with the Digital Fury logo.

The two go back: Krysalka first taught Rice when the latter was in seventh grade at Lake Weir Middle School and continued through his years at Belleview High.

Could Krysalka have imagined a future professional collaboration with Rice in those early days?

“Of course not,” Krysalka said with a laugh. “He was 12. It never entered my mind.

“But in high school, he showed a natural ability for photography,” Krysalka said. “He became our main shooter and he had a natural eye. He was considering the business in high school. I didn't want the weight on my shoulders for his career decision, it was all Marc.”

Rice described Krysalka as “an incredible influence” in the classroom.

“It was clear to me and the other students that he really enjoyed what he was doing,” Rice recalled. “I think that's what a good teacher does, gets you interested in something and I really enjoyed it and it turned into a career.”

The paths of teacher and student would cross again years later, this time as peers, after Rice decided to leave the crazy hours of network photojournalism to teach video production in 2007 at Vanguard High School.

Rice and Krysalka, still teaching at Belleview High, would bounce ideas off each other.

“Bill and I taught the same class at different schools,” Rice said. “There were a lot of times where we collaborated.”

When Rice decided to leave teaching for something affording him and his growing family a more flexible schedule, he kept his longtime mentor in mind and Krysalka joined Digital Fury in March of this year as a part-time employee.

With Krysalka nearing retirement from the school system, he's cautiously weighing a full-time role with Digital Fury.

“We'll have to take a look and see if the business can support another full-time position first,” Krysalka said.

The two say they are involved in all aspects of video production with each focusing on his strengths.

“On the higher-end jobs, Marc has the camera skill,” Krysalka said.

“And Bill serves as the audio engineer on those jobs,” Rice added. “He's very talented there. Audio quality is as important to a production as video quality.”

Their relationship is key to the business, according to Krysalka.

“Our personalities mesh so well. We're always on the same page.”

That has translated to a growing company, according to the duo.

“We're starting to get jobs out of town,” Rice said. “We've done work in Jacksonville and Tampa. We flew to Houston to do a project on a breakthrough surgery. The patient is from Ocala, so they wanted someone from here to be able to follow the patient's recovery.”

As for Digital Fury's goals?

“In 10 years, we see ourselves as a bigger organization, working nationally and having a fairly good-size, full-time staff,” Krysalka said.